East Ayrshire Council defend spending almost £60,000 on refreshments in under three years

East Ayrshire Council defend spending £58,257 on refreshments in three years (Image: Guy Hinks)

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East Ayrshire Council has defended spending £58,257 on refreshments in under three years.

Figures from a ‘Freedom of Information’ request shows the local authority has spent £22,230 on tea, coffee and biscuits since 2013.

It also shows a whopping spend of £36,027 on sandwiches in the last three years.

But Andrew Kennedy, head of facilities and property management, said: “Our catering service provides support to a range of civic and community events across the council each year.

“This includes regular consultation meetings with local businesses, community representatives and events promoting East Ayrshire to visitors from external organisations.

“Basic catering is also provided to council and partner organisation employees when attending training or, in some cases, when they are required to attend meetings or events away from their normal workplace.”

Costs could soar in future years, with findings from the FOI showing the council does not have a set refreshments budget.

This means they have carte blanche over the purse strings to fund catering for meetings, events, and entertaining.

In financial year 2013/14, the local authority spent £7994.58 on tea, coffee and biscuits alone.

But they spent over £4000 more than that on 8403 sandwiches, shelling out £12,033.31.

East Ayrshire Council have defended their spending (Image: Kilmarnock Standard)

An additional £3000 was lashed out on 9817 sandwiches in financial year 2014/15 as a whopping £15,561.33 was spent on lunch that year. Thankfully, to offset the expense, they reduced their tea kitty from the previous year – by a measly £223.

Outgoings on tea and coffee for 2015/16 currently stand at £6464.40 and £8432.46 so far for sandwiches. But with a few months of the financial year still to run, those figures are likely to soar.

Eben Wilson from the campaign group Taxpayer Scotland said the council needs to be more responsible over its spending.

He told us: “East Ayrshire Council’s internal spending of our tax money on themselves shows us yet again how easily large councils divert money from front-line services to their own internal needs.

“It’s essential every council staff member is made aware that corporate benefits, however small they may appear, add up to very large sums across a year and do not assume they will always be available.

“Ideally, these costs would be allocated to separate internal team budgets against a profit and loss account for their services.

“That would create the incentive to cut back on inessentials and focus on making the most productive use of our tax money.

“Scotland’s councils are too large and operate too much as monolithic entities and so end up spending our tax money too easily.”

In the three years, the council has had just one bill for alcohol, spending £150 on wine for the Provost’s business dinner at the Sir Alexander Fleming Centre in September this year.

Wine at the Excellence Awards was sponsored and paid for by the KLIN Group, with all other functions having been alcohol-free events.